The Russian - SETTING

by Patterson, James

  Juliana said, “Like a cluster of grapefruits waiting to be picked.”

  Jane said, “Please don’t take pictures, and if you must, don’t let anyone see them. I’d die if Allan ever saw me in this dress.”

  The twins were caught between the more sophisticated, grown-up girls and the cute, silly little girls. They wisely decided to skip commentary.

  Shawna stepped out of line, turned, and looked at her sisters. “I think we all look soooo beautiful. I am so excited about being in the wedding!”

  That was all it took to shut down Juliana and Jane. If their little sister was this excited, they weren’t going to complain.

  Mary Catherine said, “Is everyone happy with her dress? Do they all fit well?”

  The girls all nodded or mumbled that they were satisfied. Mary Catherine clapped her hands and said, “Then go change and off to school, all of you.”

  As the girls scampered away, Mary Catherine turned to me. “Good morning. You seemed so exhausted, I would’ve bet you’d sleep right through till noon. At least you look better this morning.”

  “Is it getting that bad?”

  “This is the worst I’ve ever seen a case drain you. Anything new on it? I knew better than to ask you last night.”

  “I spoke to a detective in Atlanta yesterday. It seems very likely our killer was there too, though about eight months ago. After committing five murders, he abruptly stopped killing there. Maybe we’ve heard the last of him here too.”

  “You really think so?”

  “No. No, I don’t.”

  Mary Catherine looked around to make sure none of the kids was close by. “Can we talk about Brian for a minute?”

  I felt a sudden flutter of panic. What has my oldest son done now? I gave a silent nod, steeling myself for what disturbing news might possibly follow that cold open.

  “You know I’ve been curious about where Brian goes every day.”

  “Curious, intrusively paranoid—they’re all just words.”

  She punched me in the arm playfully. For the record, playfully doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

  “I followed him yesterday morning.”

  “You conducted surveillance on Brian?” My tone indicated exactly what I thought of the idea.

  “I know, I know. It’s shady and shifty and I shouldn’t have done it. But I’m worried about him. God knows what he’s doing. Or who he’s meeting with.”

  I hated that I had to ask. “So what did you find out?”

  “I followed him to the subway. He got on the 1 train headed downtown.”

  “You didn’t follow him to see where he was going?”

  “I think he might have spotted me. I’m not sure, but I thought it’d be best if I didn’t continue.”

  I let out a smile and said, “Brian was running countersurveillance. Interesting. You got burned and returned to HQ.”

  Mary Catherine said, “That’s all you have to say? Interesting? Aren’t you worried about your son?”

  “You know I am, but he’s not breaking any laws by hopping a train downtown. We’ve got to have some faith in him. On the basketball court the other day, a boy tried to pick a fight with him, but Brian wouldn’t engage. I saw how hard he’s trying to stick to his anger management program. I’d like to give him a little more of a chance. Let’s have breakfast.”

  I put my arm around Mary Catherine as we walked from the living room into the kitchen. I saw the New York Daily News on the kitchen counter, stepped over and picked it up. It was still rolled with the rubber band the doorman used to make the papers easier to deliver.

  Mary Catherine grabbed a cup of coffee and headed into the dining room. She took a seat at the end of the dining room table. I sat down next to her and unrolled the paper.

  My eyes locked on the headline blaring in bold type: LETTER FROM A KILLER. At that same moment, my phone started to ring. I knew there had to be a connection.

  The entire front page of the New York Daily News was a letter from the person claiming to be our killer.

  To the Women of New York:

  Now that you see what I can do, you are right to be afraid. Respect the fear.

  I know how to watch. I know how to kill. I know how to evade the police.

  Your arrogance has been your downfall. I am the one in control, not you.

  Think of the one who has killed the most. I am better than him.

  And I’m about to prove it. Again. And again. And again. And again.

  Bobby Fisher

  The NYPD hadn’t gotten any heads-up about the publication of this letter. My phone kept ringing and ringing. I was getting multiple calls from management.

  The only one I answered was from Harry Grissom.

  Chapter 42

  Daniel Ott walked the streets of Manhattan. He had to get to work in Queens, but that could wait.

  Now that his letter was finally out there, he sensed people were acting differently, and he wanted to experience how it felt to walk among them. As he walked, he noticed that the crowds still bustled about, bumping and pushing, but their overall energy felt more tentative. He also noticed more people reading actual newspapers. Ott realized he was starting to get quite a kick out of seeing how others reacted to his hobby.

  How scared they seemed.

  He couldn’t suppress his smile. I did this.

  Ott pulled a copy of the New York Daily News out of his bag. He’d already read the article that accompanied his letter to the paper. He’d read it six times. Every time, he’d gotten even more excited. He loved that the reporter called him a “maestro of death” who played “a genius game of cat and mouse with the police.”

  Ott contemplated sending another letter, maybe to a national newspaper, like USA Today. He wondered if he should mention the other cities he’d visited, then he hesitated, concerned that someone might piece together his travel itinerary. It was a long shot but one he’d rather not risk. Maybe he’d just point out how clever he was in arranging his counting messages. He couldn’t deny the thrill he got from boldly taunting the police.

  His phone rang. It was too early in the morning for his usual call with his wife and daughters, but Lena said she needed to talk to him. After Ott spoke to his two daughters for a few minutes, and listened to their stories about the neighbor’s dog and how they were learning to use computers almost as well as their dad, they gave the phone back to his wife.

  Lena seemed upset. She told him that this morning an older woman had bullied her at the grocery store.

  “I was standing in the meat aisle when she reached over and pulled a package of pork chops right out of my hand. She looked at me, then walked away with the pork chops in her basket.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I let it go. I decided it wasn’t worth arguing over pork chops. Plus, she was old.”

  Ott said, “That’s what makes you so special. You’re not an arrogant bully like so many American women. You stay exactly the way you are. I hope we can raise our daughters to be just like you.”

  “Aren’t you sweet,” Lena said. “Do you know yet when you’ll be home?”

  “I have a couple more things to do here in New York City. I’ll head back probably sometime late next week.”

  “The girls and I can’t wait to see you.”

  “I can’t wait to see all of you.”

  After he finished the call, Ott contemplated his next move.

  Helping his wife through a trying experience made him feel that he was repaying part of the debt he owed her. He owed her at least as much as he did his former employers, and that bothered him a little bit.

  But his kind, quiet wife would never bother him the way brash, opinionated women did.

  Ott was starting to feel like he was doing the women in this city a favor by instilling a little more civility among them. Maybe his lesson plan was more than just a hobby.

  Chapter 43

  My morning commute was a crazed montage of phone calls and texts as I reread the killer
’s letter over and over at every stop in traffic. In the letter, the killer had made it clear he was no phony. And he was not done teaching New Yorkers a lesson in civility and manners.

  The letter was short, to the point, and clearly designed to cause panic and confusion. Was he trying to gain attention and notoriety, like the Zodiac Killer, Jack the Ripper, and the Golden State Killer had all done in the past? All of those criminals had reached out to the press. He had also raised a challenge. Think of the one who has killed the most. I considered the prolific serial killer Hollis had mentioned, Samuel Little.

  Which killer was Bobby Fisher trying to top?

  I was getting sucked into the puzzle. Exactly as the killer wanted me to do.

  I had already been on the phone to the NYPD tech department. They were busy talking to the newspaper’s computer staff, trying to figure out the origin of the email.

  I decided to make a personal visit to the New York Daily News building to see the individual in charge of editorials and letters to the editor. I drove directly to the paper’s offices, way down by Battery Park and about a mile from One Police Plaza. The editor didn’t seem surprised to see an NYPD detective in his office. He also didn’t seem to care.

  The editor was in his early thirties and was dressed surprisingly casually, given his title. I looked over the framed diplomas hanging on the wall: an undergrad degree from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism and an MBA from NYU. There were also several trophies on a low, oak bookshelf—though as I slipped past, I saw one was a soccer trophy with a plate that read FOR PARTICIPATION.

  With a murder investigation at stake, this guy was going to have to do better than that.

  He had the air of a sharp Wall Street banker working for a fraction of the salary—and, by the look of his degrees, a lot more student debt. His slicked-back dark hair and wire-frame glasses made it seem like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to be a hotshot media guy or an intellectual.

  I skipped the pleasantries and went straight for the confrontation. “I can’t believe you wouldn’t at least call us for comment before you printed a letter from what could be our lead suspect. What kind of journalism is that?”

  “Welcome to the new millennium’s journalism, Detective. In today’s media world, speed is everything. Look, we weren’t trying to screw up your investigation. Fact is, the email sat in the general folder for days before anyone even looked at it. When our techs confirmed it was sent from a New York–area IP address, we became convinced that he’d sent the letter to everyone in town, so we decided to run it before we could be scooped. And the proof is in our circulation. It’s skyrocketing.”

  “The NYPD isn’t trying to censor you or inhibit any First Amendment rights. We’re trying to catch a killer. This is an active investigation.”

  “Which is going nowhere.” The young editor made a face, but truthfully, I couldn’t read his expression. “When are you going to start doing something about this freak?”

  I realized I was getting tired of this kind of conversation, of answering the only question anyone ever asked. “We’re approaching this case from every possible angle,” I said. “Doing everything we can.”

  “I admit, Detective, I might not have your experience, but I have a good education and common sense. What about rounding up some suspects? Doing some quick searches? No one cares about search warrants anymore. This shit has got to stop. The people have a right to know that the killer is taunting everyone in New York, including the police. And now that they do know, it’s only a matter of time before they start taking matters into their own hands.”

  I chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Your belief system. That the Constitution matters only when there is no crisis. That’s not how the world works. We can’t all be hypocrites. We have to follow policies and rules set down for legal investigations.”

  The editor said, “I’ll put this argument down to a draw. But the next time the asshole kills someone, Bennett, this conversation goes on the record. And ‘Doing everything we can’ is going to sound a lot like ‘We’re not doing anything.’”

  Chapter 44

  An hour later, I met Brett Hollis in front of the main branch of the New York Public Library. His face looked much better today. That single strip of tape across his nose didn’t seem so out of place. Maybe I was just getting used to it.

  The editor at the New York Daily News was right about one thing: circulation. And not of library books. Everywhere I looked I saw people with a newspaper under their arms or reading news stories on their phones. A cab rolled by with its windows down. I could hear one of the local AM radio hosts—a well-known sports commentator—talking about the letter from the killer.

  Hollis had been busy. He’d gotten a report from the NYPD’s Computer Crimes Squad, who had worked with the Daily News IT staff and improved on the staff’s initial findings. They’d figured out that the email’s IP address had originated from a computer inside this library building. The email address provided to the paper was traced back to a newly opened account in the name of Bobby Fisher, no other identifying information attached.

  In short, the letter didn’t seem to provide any new information on the killer, other than the challenge he had posed. How was that possible?

  “By the way,” Hollis told me, “I also heard that a staff member here was the victim of a homicide up in East Harlem, just a few days ago. But her case doesn’t seem similar to ours. No mutilation, none of our guy’s markers.”

  I asked Hollis how he was doing, dealing with John Macy.

  Hollis sighed and looked up at one of the pair of giant marble lions, Patience and Fortitude, that flanked the building’s stairs. “He was the last person I saw last night and the first one to call me this morning. But if I’m working with the great and famous Michael Bennett, I guess I should expect a few rough patches.”

  “Funny.”

  Hollis asked me, “How’d the meeting with the editor at the Daily News go?”

  “About like you’d expect. It’s very clear to me that they’re only interested in the number of papers they sell or clicks the story gets online, not in helping out our homicide investigation. I swear, sometimes it feels like there are some awfully bloodthirsty people in the media who want more murders so they can have juicier stories that sell more papers.”

  Hollis shook his head in dismay, then said, “So what’re we hoping for from our visit to the library?”

  “Ideally, a description of some kind. We have the date and time the email was sent. Maybe a security camera got a useful image of the killer. We should be able to narrow down the hours of footage. Maybe a member of the staff even spoke to him. We can get a forensic artist if we have to make a composite.”

  “I hope we find something. We got nothing useful so far from the tip line.”

  I turned and looked at the crowds of people passing the library or congregating in front of it. I was struck by the fact that we were looking for a needle in a haystack. A giant haystack. And a needle that moved from city to city.

  Patience and fortitude. That’s what it would take to catch this killer.

  Chapter 45

  Daniel Ott stopped in front of the main branch of the New York Public Library, contemplating the new research he needed to do today. As before, he preferred to use someone else’s computer when looking up anything…unsavory. If anyone searched his laptop, they’d find only his work-related materials and Google searches having to do with the best homeschool curriculums.

  The most important part of today’s research was not electronic. He was interested in the reaction of the other librarians to the death of the librarian he had killed, along with whoever that other man was.

  That’s why he was back here today.

  He was already wondering about his next victim. He’d be leaving New York in about a week, and it would be nice to enjoy one last night of rituals and excitement in the big city.

  Besides, he’d promised the Daily N
ews that he would claim another life. And he didn’t want to let his readers down.

  He looked in the faces of the women striding past the library and saw half a dozen who might fit his needs. Women who looked like they would ignore him if he spoke to them. Women who thought they were better than him, better than everyone.

  As he stood for the moment next to the stairs leading into the main entrance of the library, however, he glanced down and saw a frail-looking woman with a child sitting in her lap. She wore a floral dress that looked vintage 1970s. Next to her sat a wire shopping basket holding a stack of clothes with some chips and a half eaten Clif Bar balanced on top.

  The woman spoke with a heavy accent. “Can you help us? We need money to get upstate.”

  She had big brown eyes and seemed completely defeated. The little girl in her lap was about three. Her curly hair was dirty, and she wore a T-shirt stained with grape juice. She gave him the briefest of smiles.

  Ott pulled his wallet from his back pocket. When he opened it, he realized all he had was a single ten-dollar bill. He’d meant to stop at the ATM but had forgotten. Ott looked down at the sad pair and handed the woman his ten dollars.

  The woman squeezed his hand and said, “Bless you. May God bless you, sir.”

  “I’ll be happy if you use the money to buy that little girl some food. I believe I’m beyond God’s blessing. If there is a God,” Ott said. He realized that some of the lessons of his childhood had definitely stuck with him. He had nothing against churches, but that wasn’t how he’d been raised. Aside from his wedding, he had never been inside one.

  Ott left the woman and went into the library. The first time he had visited, he’d made a quick note of the security. Frankly, he’d expected more cameras. There were a few around, but he also noticed several dummy cameras, fake cameras positioned to make security appear beefier. Ott glanced up to make sure they had not installed video cameras since his last visit. His eyes quickly moved up the walls and around the decorative crown molding. There was nothing. No cameras or sensors of any kind.